A building full of women's bathrooms will be constructed to make up for the lack of women's bathrooms in existing buildings

The Engineering School announced plans to build additional women’s bathrooms yesterday in response to accusations that enough female bathrooms are not currently provided. Construction will begin in May on a three-story building which will contain only women’s bathrooms in the courtyard outside Rice Hall.

Because of their age and size, many buildings in the Engineering School, as well as the physics building, are not able to offer women’s bathrooms on all floors.

“There’s a story about a girl who went looking for a bathroom in Thornton after an exam, late at night, and she got lost,” second-year Engineering student Valerie Chattin said. “I still don’t know what happened to her. The Thornton basement is scary at night.”

The construction of the bathroom building was prompted by several similar incidents and is designed to cut down on long lines outside of well-known women’s bathrooms, as well as the number of lost female students roaming.

However, the project has faced a fair number of criticisms. Students took to Yik Yak to express their thoughts.

“Women are always getting new things before men,” one commenter said.

“What are you talking about? They’re literally being segregated,” another responded.

“Only 31 percent of undergraduate and 26 percent of graduate Engineering students are women. That’s fewer than the number of international students. So if one third of the bathrooms in the E-school are women’s, then women are actually unfairly represented, proportionally,” one inexplicably long and well researched yak said.

The rest of the thread was not suitable for print.

Although construction trucks will block parts of Stadium Road, the construction is primarily designed to not affect students in other schools.

“I don’t usually actually go into the Engineering School on tours,” second-year College student and University Guide David Fondreaux said. “But I might start keeping groups around that general area for a while, so that whenever people start asking where the ladies’ room is, I can just point them all to the same place.”